In the first half of the day, we had a rather boring lecture. It wasn’t boring because the topic was boring. No. It was just that some guy from headquarters was reading it from a piece of paper, and he was stumbling over his words a bit.
Compared to our instructors, each of whom had been on the front lines and didn’t just read theory but shared their experiences. Compared to them, this lecture on the history of Mariupol was boring.
But at the beginning, before the lecture, there was an interesting moment. In order to warm us up before the lecture, we were each asked to write a few sentences about what Ukraine means to me.
I thought, “Hmm, interesting, that’s exactly the topic I discussed with Oleksiy yesterday when we were on duty at the KSP.” I tried to write down the essence of what we had come to: “Ukraine is a territory and a community of people who strive for independence and are ready to fight for it. People who want to choose their own path. People who don’t want to live under someone else’s orders.”
In the afternoon, we had reconnaissance training, and I had a cool experience. We went to a forest-steppe area where there was a lot of greenery. There were two teams, each with a platoon. Each chose its location.
The task was to conduct reconnaissance. We had to find the opposing team or groups of its players. At the same time, we had to remain undetected.
Alexei and I went on reconnaissance as a pair. At the same time, we practiced moving in pairs. At one point, Alexei heard the enemy moving and signaled to take cover. There was no time to run to a good hiding place.
I lay down near a small fir tree, where I was sitting at the time. Literally 10-15 seconds later, we saw the enemy column moving quickly. The column was moving very close to us, literally 2-3 meters away.
We froze. Only our eyes moved. Ants crawled over my hands and face. Ants got into my mouth, and they tasted sour. But we couldn’t move under any circumstances.
Of course, I was surprised how it happened that the entire platoon passed by me in a column 2-3 meters away and didn’t see me. Perhaps it was the power of camouflage, in the sense that if you don’t move at all, you can’t be seen. Perhaps it was the power of pixels, the camouflage coloring of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Or perhaps it was simply the power of the enemy’s inattention 🙂
All this led to the release of a certain amount of adrenaline into my body. Feelings and sensations are heightened at this moment. The world becomes brighter.
After the convoy passed, we waited a couple of minutes and continued on our way. After a while, we came to an incredibly beautiful clearing. More precisely, my heightened senses made it so for me.
It’s hard for me to convey its beauty to you. It was a clearing with small birch trees. It was incredibly beautiful.
I am a gamer, and I sometimes like to watch videos like Skyrim 4K with special mods and very good graphics (usually you need powerful hardware and a super cool video card for this).
But what I saw and felt in this clearing surpassed any game. It was divine beauty. The graphics were at their best. Adrenaline makes the world brighter.
There was another interesting moment. Under the influence of adrenaline, you do some things naturally, automatically.
For example, according to the rules, when you are walking on a green path and you need to cross the road or a wide path. When you approach it, you must carefully look out and survey the road, and then quickly cross it. Under the influence of adrenaline, you do these things automatically. When you approach the road, you naturally understand that you need to look carefully first. And then you naturally feel that you need to cross it quickly.
After that, you realize that this state under the influence of adrenaline is almost like a drug. I am grateful for such an interesting experience.
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